Strether, watching,
after his habit, and overscoring with thought, positively had
moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for her--
occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway
vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. WOULD
she jump, could she, would THAT be a safe placed--this question, at
such instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight
lips, her conscious eyes. It came back to the main point at issue:
would she be, after all, to be squared? He believed on the whole
she would jump; yet his alternations on this subject were the more
especial stuff of his suspense. One thing remained well before
him--a conviction that was in fact to gain sharpness from the
impressions of this evening: that if she SHOULD gather in her
skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage while in motion, he
would promptly enough become aware. She would alight from her
headlong course more or less directly upon him; it would be
appointed to him, unquestionably, to receive her entire weight.
Signs and portents of the experience thus in reserve for him had as
it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of Chad's party.
It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a prospect
that, leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving
those of the guests already known to him as well as a mass of
brilliant strangers of both sexes and of several varieties of
speech, he had desired five quiet minutes with little Bilham, whom
he always found soothing and even a little inspiring, and to whom
he had actually moreover something distinct and important to say.
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